


If I Ever Were to Lose You...

by halvbloodprince



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, I Don't Even Know, Jesse lives, Minor Injuries, Why Did I Write This?, no beta we die like men, tlou2 was beautifully painful
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halvbloodprince/pseuds/halvbloodprince
Summary: During Ellie's trek to Santa Barbara, she hides out in the basement of a house to avoid a horde of Infected. A few days pass before the horde gets distracted by an unlucky group of travelers, which led to several deaths but allowed for her escape. Amongst the dead were the bodies of two kids. She was unable to simply leave their bodies out in the open, so she set out to give them a proper burial. In doing so, she met two strangers...
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Prologue of Sorts

**Author's Note:**

> This was a niggling idea that wouldn't leave my brain. It's funny because I originally didn't have any plans for OCs, but I guess they kind of sneak up on you sometimes. 
> 
> (There might be an M/M pairing if I actually continue this. I have a half-baked idea for it. If so, I'll add the tag when I do)
> 
> Anyway, this is a way for me to avoid finishing my actual book.

Ellie knew the second she stepped through the door that she was making a mistake. That leaving was a mistake. It was too late, though. She couldn't turn back, not now. Not after… she would not be able to face Tommy again if she didn’t do this. She still couldn't look him in the eye properly, even after a whole year. They were just too similar to… she pressed her fingers against her eyes, hard enough that spots danced across her vision. It was a vain attempt to stop the oncoming tears, the prickly sensation behind her eyes was an all too familiar feeling. One she had grown very accustomed to over the last year. 

It was strange, she thought. With the number of people she had lost, one would think she would have been able to just shrug it off. The gnawing emptiness in her chest, however, was something that she had not quite encountered before and had no knowledge on how to rid herself of it. It wasn’t a new feeling, necessarily, as it had been her constant companion since Jo— 

She shook her head, her fingers still pressed against her eyes as she pressed even harder. She needed to just _stop thinking_. It was impossible, though. Nothing she did ever worked, nothing took the pain away. The only moments of freedom she had from it were the brief seconds on the cusp of the mornings she awoke without nightmares, as extremely rare as those occasions were, and that’s only because for those brief seconds she would _forget_. She would forget the lodge, she would forget Seattle, forget that Jo—forget that _he_ was gone. In those moments she’d half expect to hear a knock on her door and his gruff voice telling her that it was time to get up. Those moments never last long enough, because everything would always come rushing back and she'd be forced to gasp as the weight settled on her heart. 

Not even Dina—and _fuck_ , she loved her so much—could take away the weight or fill the hole. Ellie loved being on the farm, being with Dina, JJ, and Jesse when he would visit, which was often. She just felt like she was constantly dragging them down with her as she struggled to escape the nightmares she was drowning in. so, she would have been lying if she said it was Tommy that put the idea of leaving in her head. It had actually been something she had been bouncing around for a while. She wasn’t getting any better, her attacks never lessened, never grew fewer and further between. She felt, if anything, they were becoming even more constant, escalating in ferocity. 

The attack she had in the barn had brought the idea back with a vengeance and Tommy had only given her the out she needed. It had been the first time she had an attack while holding JJ, and it terrified her that something could have happened to him while she was in the midst of a waking nightmare. She couldn’t count the number of times that Dina had to wrestle with her during an attack when Ellie would wake up screaming, or a sound would trigger something and suddenly her knife was in her hand. But Dina was fully capable of taking care of herself. She also knew what could set Ellie off and would avoid doing things that might be triggering. What happens when JJ learns to walk? He won’t understand that he had to approach Ellie from where she could see him. There were a countless number of ways he might accidentally set her off and that was terrifying.

Ellie shook her head of her thoughts, her fingers slipped from her eyes and she scrubbed a hand down her face. Green blossomed across her vision as she took in the forest trees around her.

She needed to stop thinking and just walk. Leaving might have been a mistake, but staying would have been one, too. She needed to put her demons to bed before she could return, otherwise she’d never be able to sleep peacefully. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/halvbloodprince) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/halvblodprince/?hl=en) | [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@halvblodprince)


	2. The Hunter Became the Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dixie National Forest and Las Vegas. 
> 
> Ellie hit a few speed bumps... but nothing she couldn't handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Las Vegas was uneventful since Ellie skirted around it on her way to Santa Barbara.

It had been about eight days since she left the farm. Left Dina and JJ. It had been rather uneventful, all things considered. That changed when she arrived in Dixie National Forest. Ellie planned to camp out for the night in the relative safety of the trees. Sleeping on tree branches wasn’t her favorite thing to do, but it certainly kept her up and away from any Infected that might wander across her path while she was asleep. She knew there were cabins somewhere, but there weren’t any marked on her map and she wasn’t going to waste time looking when the trees would provide her with enough shelter. 

It was when she had just found a suitable tree to climb, one with branches that were thick enough to hold her, that she heard them. There was a soft crunch of leaves and a muted snap of a twip that caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. It was just on the cusp of dusk, so her senses were already on high alert. Most people might not have even heard the sounds, but she had learned from the best. The footsteps, as quiet as they were, were too calculated to be a passing Infected, whose footsteps would be more of a shuffle anyway. They were definitely human. Which meant Hunters. 

She made sure to not give any sort of indication that she heard them. Luckily she had not been on the verge of climbing, or she might have to give away the fact that she could hear them coming. It was hard to pinpoint how many of them there were, but if she had to guess, it wouldn’t be more than three. She could handle that.

She knelt down, as though she were adjusting her shoelace as the steps grew close enough to strike. All of her weapons were always ready to grab, but she figured taking them down quietly would be the best course of action. So, with that in mind, she gripped her switchblade tightly in her hand. This, this was something that she was used to. She was used to always fighting; surviving. She couldn’t remember a time when she  _ wasn’t  _ fighting in some form or another. Be it physical, mental, or most recently, emotional. 

The second she heard a sound behind her come within ten feet of her, she struck. She spun around on the ball of one foot, her blade already arcing through the air, embedding itself in the chest of the first figure, who immediately let out a few expletives. 

“Fucking bitch!” he screamed, yanking the blade out and throwing it to the ground. He held up his rifle to shoot, but she had already ducked behind the tree. “She’s behind the tree! Fucking surround her!”

He had been the first to enter the small clearing, the other two a few steps behind. So they had not seen her strike until she had already hidden herself. 

There was plenty of underbrush to crouch in, and the tree had a thick trunk that hid her from view, but they could still easily surround her. She quickly grabbed her bow and notched an arrow. She could hear them cautiously moving to surround her, but they were still a few feet from being able to see her. 

She held her breath to listen. The man she hit was still where he had been, seemingly content with allowing the other two to approach in his stead. He must be the leader. The other two were slowly flanking her and it was only a matter of time before they would spot her. The second she heard another crunch of leaves, she angled herself out from behind the tree and lodged an arrow through the neck of the man approaching on her left. She immediately ducked back behind the tree, out of sight of the other two.

There was a brief moment of silence before the three men seemed to understand what had happened. There was a thud of the body hitting the forest floor, followed by the sound of a man choking as blood began to fill his lungs.

“Fucking hell, man! She killed him!” the third man said. 

“I can fucking see that!” the leader shouted. “Fucking go get her!”

She had already notched another arrow. She glanced around at the other trees surrounding her, each of them wide enough to block her from view. She took a deep breath, readied her bow, and darted out from behind the tree to her right and ducked behind another, once again out of sight. 

“Can’t run from us, bitch!” one of them called out. She didn’t care who at this point. 

“Wanna fucking bet?” she muttered under her breath. Her arrow was notched, her bow was ready. 

They were being cautious, but it didn’t matter. They made the mistake of targeting her and that would be their downfall. 

Ellie once again spun out from her hiding place and let loose another arrow. It arced through the air and found itself just a tad off the mark, lodging itself just below the collarbone of the third man. 

“Fuck!” he screamed in pain. “Man, you go get her!” 

There was a grunt and a snap as he broke the arrow to yank it out of his body. Ellie only had the sounds to go by, as she had ducked behind the tree once again. She crouched low and tried to think about what they would do now. She figured they would give up all pretense of attempting to capture her, given that she had killed one already and wounded another. 

She could hear them approaching again, ready to flank her. It was only a matter of seconds before they succeeded. She didn’t think she’d be able to get away with shooting off another arrow. Not with them both advancing on her and no doubt ready for it. 

Ellie had a few options, but with very limited time to decide. She wanted to be quiet, though, which greatly diminished her options. She tossed her bow down on the underbrush in front of her and pulled out her silenced pistol. Then, without missing a beat, she darted forward, keeping low to the ground and then pivoted behind another tree. In that same breath stuck part of her body out from the other side and sent off a quiet shot, nailing number three with a well-placed bullet to the head. He was on the ground before he even knew what hit him. She felt more than heard a bullet whizz past her head and she ducked back behind the tree. 

“You fucking cunt!” the leader yelled. “When I get my hands on you, you bitch!”

“You’ll what?” she retorted. “Is the big man scared of a little girl?”

“You sure have quite the mouth on you, bitch,” he said as he kept advancing. “I can’t wait to see what else it can do.”

“Fat chance,” she muttered. She quieted her breath and focused on the sounds of his footsteps. He was coming forward on her right. 

Ellie waited until he was just about to round the tree before she came around the other side and shot him point-blank in the side of the head, the silencer on her gun snapping off immediately after. He was dead before he hit the ground. 

“Guess you picked the wrong bitch, huh?” she asked his corpse, tucking her pistol away. 

She took time to rummage through his pockets, grabbing any ammo he had tucked away. She also emptied the rifle he carried of its bullets and pocketed those as well. There was also a pocket knife that she stashed in her bag. It might come in handy. She grabbed her bow before making her way to the other two and doing the same thing as the first. 

Ellie stood up and surveyed the small clearing where the fight had started. There was just enough light from the setting sun that she could see where she stepped, but it wasn’t quite enough. She tapped her flashlight on, causing the clearing to suddenly be illuminated in a bright light. 

It took a minute of searching, but she finally saw something reflecting back at her. She leaned down to pick up her switchblade. It was a bit bloody, but it had seen worse. She walked back over to one of the bodies and wiped the blade down until no blood could be seen. She then stuffed it in her back pocket. 

She took one last look at the tree that would have been her camp for the night, before setting off into the trees. It wasn’t exactly wise to spend the night next to three dead bodies. Besides, there were sure to be more hunters around and she didn’t want to push her luck more than she needed to in one night. It wasn’t wise to dredge on after sunset, but it wouldn’t be the first time she had done so and would not be the last. 

* * *

Las Vegas was a nightmare. Ellie had never heard so many Infected in one place before. She gave the city an extremely wide berth, even if it tacked on a few extra days of travel. There was no chance she would make it out of that alive if she attempted it. All the groans and clicking could be heard from even an exceptional distance. It made her wonder how many people had once lived there and if there was even anyone still left alive there. She doubted it. Who in their right mind would stay in a city like that for this long? 

The terror they must have felt in the days after the outbreak, and then the following years. This world was all Ellie had ever known, it was hard to imagine a time where people  _ didn’t  _ have to worry about Infected. It must have been insane when it first started to spread and people weren’t sure what they were dealing with, didn’t know what precautions they needed to take. How hard it must have been to watch your loved ones lose their minds and  _ not know what was happening.  _

She remembered a conversation she had with Sam, the night before he died. She regretted it, afterward, but now she wondered.  _ Were  _ they still inside? Were they helpless as the fungus took over their brains, still alive and watching, listening? It had been years since she had thought of that conversation, but the sheer amount of Infected in that city made the thought jump into her head. 

Which led to her thinking about the different kinds of Infected she had encountered in her life. Runners, Stalkers, Clickers, Bloaters, and Shamblers. There were already too many different types. She supposed different environments could breed different mutations. The longer high numbers of Infected stayed in one place could also lead to different breeds. There had been a lot in the school of Bill’s town, where she had encountered her first bloater. And the tunnels beneath Seattle had been crawling with them, leading to her first experience with a Shambler. Similar, but different to Bloaters. How many others were out there? 

It made her ache for the safety of Jackson, the only place she’d ever felt at home. Although, that wasn’t quite right. It was less the place, and more a person that had given her the feeling of home. 

It didn’t matter now, though. He was gone and he was never coming back while the person that took him from her still lived and breathed with the knowledge that Ellie had  _ begged  _ and  _ pleaded—  _

It didn’t matter. Ellie would find her, and then she would finally be able to rest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/halvbloodprince) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/halvblodprince/?hl=en) | [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@halvblodprince)


	3. What's Two More?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Palmdale, CA. 
> 
> Ellie ends up stuck in a basement, trapped by a horde of Infected. Her flashlight was beginning to crap out on her and the dark was fucking with her mind. She could almost hear his voice...
> 
> She gets out, eventually, but it costs something that wasn't hers to pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this specific journal entry from the game was what had initially inspired this fic. i didn't originally have plans for an OC, and certainly not one that i put as much thought into as i did with these ones. i like him, even if i did crush his soul and break his heart before he's even introduced. such is life though. 
> 
> the lilies i mention in this chapter were the ones on joel's grave. technically it was vase of different flowers, but i just wanted to mention the lilies. I'm not even 100% certain they are lilies but they look like them so.... its not even a huge deal. i don't even think it'll ever be mentioned again. 
> 
> i also did look up Jewish traditions and the placing of stones on graves is an actual thing. i really liked the thought of that instead of flowers. i figured ellie would want to place something that would stand the test of time, something that wouldn't wilt in a matter of days.

Ellie made it to Palmdale, California before running into another horde, this one significantly smaller than the one Las Vegas was overrun with, but still just as deadly. It was entirely an accident. The sky had looked angry since she had awoken and she knew that eventually, she would need to take cover and wait it out. So, logically, she looked for shelter in the first relatively calm-looking neighborhood she ran across. That was the first mistake. She should have been more cautious, honestly, but at the first crack of thunder, she just wanted to find somewhere to bed down. She entered the first house she found that looked stable and one without a boarded up front door, just as another crack sounded overhead, which was why she missed the telltale signs of clickers within. She didn’t miss the runner that came at her, though.

Her second mistake was not turning tail and running back out onto the street. Instead, she ran into the open door to her left, which turned out to be a bedroom. She narrowly missed another runner that started coming toward her from inside the room by jumping out the open window. A quick glance to her right gave her enough time to process that numerous Infected that were attracted to the sound of her landing on the loose gravel just below the window. There were far too many for her to fight off on her own. There was a fence blocking her way forward and to her left was the street, as well as doors that would lead to the basement of the house.

Her third, and final mistake, had been to choose the basement over the street. In retrospect, it was a gamble either way. The basement could have also been infested with Infected, but it wasn’t likely based on how the doors had been situated. The street as well could have been filled with Infected as the crackling of thunder overhead drew them out of the other houses. 

So, in that instant, Ellie had chosen the basement. It held no Infected inside, luckily for her, and the doors had closed solidly behind her. There was no way that anything would be able to open the doors unless they had the full capacity of their brains, which the Infected did not. Regardless, she still wrapped both handles with a few feet of chain she found lying around. The Infected outside groaned and clicked above her, having decided to pace back and forth just outside the doors. Which meant she had to wait them out, hoping they would shuffle off to somewhere else. 

If she hadn’t been alone, she probably would have been able to take them. There couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty of them based on the size of the neighborhood. It was all just an estimate, though. She had no way of knowing. It was irrelevant, anyway. She was alone, and low on the firepower needed for large groups. 

Her exploration of the basement didn’t yield much. She found a few dirty rags that she shoved into her bag to be used for whatever she needed, be it a Molotov, or a half-assed medkit. Though really, she would wash the rags the first chance she got. 

She did find a few bags of dehydrated fruit, which she stuck in her bag to eat later. There was also a container of dried beans, which were not exactly her favorite, but would make a decent meal with some rabbit meat if she ever got out of the damn basement. She also found a small canister of ground coffee. She stroked the side of the can almost reverently, a prickling sensation forming behind her eyes. She let out a shaky breath before putting that into her bag as well. 

They were decent finds, she supposed, but the  _ real  _ jackpot was the pack of black sketching pencils she found. She carefully put them into her backpack, making sure they were wedged between things so she wouldn’t accidentally break them. 

It was hard to keep track of time since there were no windows for her to see out of. It was only the faint cracks of the doors that told her whether it was night or day. 

She tried to use her flashlight sparingly, but the darkness was messing with her mind. She only used the light to sketch by, for the most part, using up her older pencils before opening the new pack, but it was slowly running out of juice. No matter how long she shook it, the light would constantly flicker until it sputtered out. Ellie was terrified it would finally give out completely before she could leave the basement. 

She could still hear the infected just outside the doors, shuffling back and forth between the house and the fence. The walls of the basement were too thick for her to hear anything from above her, but she could assume that some of the Infected had made their way back into the house. The streets were probably empty now since it had been at least two nights since the storm. Most of the Infected would have retreated into the houses. It was just her luck that the ones still outside were guarding her only escape.

Ellie wasn’t sure just how much more of this she could take. The darkness was messing with her. She kept hearing sounds that weren’t there, smelling iron… 

She missed Dina. She missed JJ, her potato spud. She missed the farm. Jackson… she even missed Jesse’s stupid jokes about how Ellie stole his girlfriend. She wondered what Jesse did once he found out she had left again. Did he move permanently to the farm to help Dina? Probably. He was always there anyway, it seemed. Not that Ellie had minded. It was sort of awkward at first, living with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s ex, the father of their baby. They made it work, though. Jesse adored JJ and vise versa. They would be fine without her until she could get back. 

If she ever got out of this fucking  _ basement! _

Fuck, she wanted to scream, but it would only agitate the Infected outside and she would rather avoid that if at all possible. 

So, she was stuck sitting as quietly as possible in the dark, ghostly phantoms her only company. 

  
  
  


“ _ What’re you doin’, kiddo? _ ” a voice asked, causing Ellie to jerk awake from where she had been half-asleep, curled against one of the basement walls. 

Her heart was thundering in her chest, the gravelly voice still echoing in her head. 

“ _ You really gonna go through with this? _ ”

“Joel,” she choked out in a whisper, a sob bubbling up into her throat. The voice sounded so real like he was sitting right next to her. She could almost pretend that he was, but she knew that if she were to reach out she would find nothing but a thick air of disappointment and heartbreak. 

“ _ If I ever were to lose you, _ ” his voice said again, so fucking clearly that she closed her eyes to hold onto the moment just a little longer. “ _ I’d surely lose myself…”  _

“Everything I have found here,” she whispered, her voice cracking as tears escaped. “I’ve not found by my—”

There was a loud screech from outside the basement doors, startling Ellie. She stood up, grabbing her backpack from next to her, throwing the straps over her shoulders, and turned on the flashlight. The beam flickered in and out pathetically, but at least it stayed on. She heard more clicking as she stepped closer to the doors. And then rushed footsteps as the Infected began to run off in the direction of the street. She strained to hear anything that could tell her what was going on, but it was hard to make anything out above the slowly receding sounds of Infected as they moved away, rushing off toward something. 

This was her chance. She immediately unraveled the chain from the handles and slowly pushed open one of the doors. The light hurt her eyes at first, but she squinted and pushed through it, this was her chance to escape. There was an explosion to her left toward where the other houses on the street were, but that didn’t concern her as she heard the screeches of dying Infected. She took off in the opposite direction, thankfully avoiding any straggling Infected that hadn’t been attracted to the sounds just as another explosion went off. 

Ellie took a moment to look back over her shoulder. She could see smoke wafting up into the air from a few houses down. She heard screaming and not the kind that she would normally associate with dying Infected. She was too far to do anything to help, as the screaming cut off just as soon as it began. She heard some vague shouting and then it was quiet. 

She stopped running. She had not gone very far. There was a brief moment of hesitation before she pivoted around and pulled out her gun, heading back toward where she came from. 

There wasn’t much left when she got to where the explosion happened. There was a pile of dead and still smoldering Clickers and Runners and another pile not too much further off. Maybe a dozen bodies between the two piles. As well as a few lone ones scattered about the street. Amongst the Infected were a few dead bodies of what looked like some travelers. 

A group of them must have been passing through, only to get caught much as Ellie had, though it seemed that at least some of them had managed to escape. She knelt down to rifle through the bodies of the Infected that weren’t still smoldering. There wasn’t much, just a few odds and ends that she might be able to fashion into a weapon with the right materials. 

It was as she rifled through the last body that she spotted them, lying half on the sidewalk, their clothes bloodied and torn at the neck. It looked like a pair of Clickers had got to them before they even knew what happened. Both of their jugulars had been torn out, so at least their deaths were quick.

But they were just kids… younger than she had been when she left Boston. 

Ellie took a moment to stop herself from throwing up. She would never get used to seeing the bodies of children. It always made her think of Riley and Sam, whose lives had also been cut too short. 

When she gathered her bearings once more, she scrutinized the sky, trying to gauge roughly what time it was. It seemed early enough, couldn’t be any later than noon. She looked down at the bodies again and got to work.

  
  
  
  


Ellie burned the bodies of the adults, unwilling to just leave them out in the open, but unable to spend the time to bury them all. The children, however, she couldn’t bear to burn them, nor would she leave them. So, she would lay them to rest. She buried them beneath a large oak tree that grew in what she assumed was an old playground, choking back her tears all the while. It was just down the street from where they died. She could still see the crispy remains of the Infected from where she stood. 

Once she had finished placing that last of the dirt onto the graves, she tossed the old, rusted shovel away from her and surveyed her work. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Except it was missing something. She looked up past the tree to a nearby wooden fence. It had definitely seen better days, as it was sagging in a few places, but it would do.

Ellie carefully broke off two decent sized pieces of wood, bringing them back to the graves and placing them down before she walked off in another direction, eyes trained to the ground. 

It took her a few minutes, but she eventually found what she sought in the front yard of a house a little way down from the park. She quickly made her way back and knelt down at the head of the graves. She wedged the two pieces of wood into the dirt, deep enough that they wouldn’t fall over even if there was a strong wind. She then took the stones she had found and placed them gently atop the graves, a few each, laid against the wood. The stones were unassuming, but they were smooth, and each uniquely shaped.

Ellie finished placing them and stood to admire her handiwork. There was a prickling sensation behind her eyes but she refused to cry. She had done what she could, even if it did nothing to alleviate her guilt. 

Somehow it still felt wrong, like there was something else she needed to do. She thought back to the last time she had stood at the grave of a child. Sam had deserved better last words, dead and alive. She couldn’t leave these two without saying something. She just didn’t know what. 

She looked back down to the stones and unbidden, an image of another grave came to mind, one with snow and lilies surrounding it, and the soft sound of Dina singing behind her. Honestly, she couldn’t even remember what she had been singing. Most of that day was a blur. It gave her an idea, though. 

Ellie reached up the scrub at tears that had escaped at the memories and gave the two fresh graves a long look. 

She then took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sang.

“ _ All the demons used to come around, _

_ I'm grateful now they've left. _

_ So persistent in my ways, _

_ here an angel, lying here to stay. _

_ No resistance, no alarms, please this is just too good to be gone.” _

She let the words fade into the air, struggling to keep herself from breaking down. 

“I hope that was okay,” she said, to no one. The beating of her heart was her only company. 

“It was beautiful,” came a voice from behind her. 

Ellie seized up, instinctively reaching for her gun. Too late, she realized her weapons were in her bag that she had placed against the tree while she dug. 

“Wait, wait!” came the voice again, slightly panicked as Ellie gripped her switchblade and turned around to face them. 

She wasn’t sure what to expect as she turned around. Hunters, maybe, since that always seemed to be the case. Instead, she came face to face with an older woman, older than she was used to seeing. With her was a young man, who was the one who had spoken. He looked to be around her age or a few years older. Their clothes were dirty, but they appeared to be new. They were most likely part of the group that came through earlier, the ones that allowed her to escape. 

The boy had dark hair and the women’s hair was much too grey for her to tell what color it might have been. They had similar enough features that she could assume they were related. 

“What do you want?” Ellie said, every inch of her on guard. 

“Nothing,” the boy said. He glanced at the woman, who gave him a nod. “We were— _ are _ a part of the group that passed through earlier.” 

His gaze darted to the graves for a moment before he looked upward. 

Ellie knew that move. He was trying not to cry. She relaxed her stance a bit, her hand lowering. She was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. Logically she knew there was nothing she could have done. If she had left the basement any earlier she would have been torn apart by the Clickers. Those people and—and the kids were dead before she had even left. That didn’t alleviate her guilt in the slightest, though. What’re another few lives in the long list of people that have died while she survived?

“I’m sorry,” she said after a tense moment. 

“Don’t be,” he said, taking a step forward. He stopped when Ellie tensed again. “What you did for them meant a lot to my Bubbeh and to—to me…”

There was a brief moment of confusion before Ellie recalled where she had heard that term before. Bubbeh meant grandmother. She remembered Dina saying it when she had been telling Ellie about her family.

“I just…” she paused. “I didn’t want to leave them.”

“Are you Jewish?” he asked. 

It was a fair question. The rocks on the graves were a very Jewish thing, something she had learned from Dina. It wasn’t like she had flowers. The yards were more overgrown with weeds than anything suitable for a child. Besides, rocks would stand the test of time whereas flowers would eventually wilt and die. Which was a thought that broke her heart. 

“No,” she said. “My—”

She stopped, unable to finish her sentence. What was Dina to her now? Ellie still loved her, that would never be in question. She planned on returning when she finished what she started in Seattle, but Dina had made it clear that she would not be there when she did.

“Your what?” the man asked.

“Nothing,” she replied, her voice steady. “Just someone mentioned it to me once and I guess it stuck with me.”

“And the song?” he inquired. “It really was beautiful.”

He was just full of questions, Ellie thought, but that specific one caused her jaw to tense up and she looked away. 

He must have understood that he hit a chord because he didn’t push her to answer. Not that she owed him anything. 

“The name’s Asher,” he said instead. “And this is my Bubbeh, Esther.”

“Ellie,” she said after finally relaxing her jaw. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Ellie.”

“Uhm, yeah,” she replied a bit awkwardly. “Same.”

She finally tucked her switchblade back into her pocket. She knew the two before harm her. She walked over to her backpack and picked it up, slinging it over her shoulder. There wasn’t anything left for her here.

Ellie glanced back at her to say a quick goodbye and was met with the sight of the woman, Esther, making strange gestures with her hands to Asher, who nodded along as if they were having a conversation. 

“I have to get going,” she said. Ellie wasn’t even sure why she was bothering to say anything. They didn’t know her, nor did she know them. 

“Wait!” Asher called before she could turn away. They both walked closer to her, which only made her slightly nervous. She had good instincts, though, and knew they weren’t going to do anything untoward. 

As they got a bit closer, she took notice of the scars that littered their bodies. Esther had a particularly nasty one across her throat. It might be the reason why the woman didn’t seem to speak. They only stopped advancing when they reached the foot of the graves. 

Esther leaned down, kneeling between the two graves, tears filling her soft grey eyes. 

Ellie looked away to give her privacy. She had definitely overstayed her welcome. There was nothing more she could do for them. She looked over at Asher, who had stepped closer to her. He had the very same eyes that Esther did. 

“I should go before it gets dark,” she said.

“Of course, it’s just—” he cut himself off and cleared his throat. 

Ellie could tell he was trying very hard not to let his emotions get the best of him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice relatively calm. “We—we were too far away when you—when you buried them. We were hoping that you could tell us which was which.”

Ellie said nothing. The two kids had been covered in a lot of blood, but it was still easy enough to recognize that they were twins. She had never met twins before, but it hadn’t been hard to come to that conclusion. It was also easy enough to understand what Asher wanted to know. 

“B-Ben,” he stuttered out, his voice catching. A hand came up to press against his eyes, a gesture that was very familiar to Ellie. 

“Sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. 

Asher roughly cleared his throat before continuing. “Ben had on, uhm, he had a dark green shirt and C-Caleb had a d-dark blue shirt.”

Ellie let him stutter out descriptions of the two, unwilling to react to the tears that spilled down his face, escaping his closed eyes and the fingers still pressed roughly against them. She gently removed her backpack, once again placing it down against the base of the tree. She pulled out her switchblade and knelt down at the head of the first grave. She moved the rocks a bit and removed the makeshift headstone and placed it over her lap. 

She then meticulously began carving Caleb’s name into the wood. No one spoke as she made quick work of it. When she finished rounding out the ‘B’ she paused.

“Did he have a favorite animal?” she asked the two of them quietly, the only other sounds were from the soft sniffling that she had discreetly been ignoring, and the wind as it blew through the tree above them. She didn’t want the piece of wood to bear only a name. 

She could hear Asher behind her choke out a sob. Ellie’s grip on her switchblade tightened. She would wait patiently for him to gather himself. As she tried not to listen to his quiet sobs, she didn’t expect a tap on her arm. She jerked away instinctively, before registering that it was only Esther. 

Esther, who was holding out a small, slightly dirtied stuffed giraffe. 

Ellie was almost certain that the universe wanted her to suffer. 

Asher’s voice spoke up from behind her, his voice a bit hoarse. 

“Giraffes are the only thing that they agree on,” he paused and Ellie could hear the hitch in his voice. “Was the only thing.”

Ellie looked at the giraffe still in Esther’s hand, which was still stretched out toward her. She placed her blade down on the wood and cupped her hands over Esther’s on the giraffe and gently pushed it back toward the older woman’s chest. 

“It’s okay, I don’t need the visual,” she said, trying to smile. She thinks that she may have succeeded because Esther returned it with a wobbly one of her own, tucking the giraffe close to her heart.

Ellie turned back to the piece of wood, picking up her switchblade. She never quite got the hang of carving out three-dimensional shapes from wood. She supposed she might have if she had kept at it, but she had always preferred learning and practicing the guitar instead. Regardless, etching out a giraffe onto the plank would be easy enough. She drew enough of them over the years that this should be no problem. 

She made quick work of it, adding the date of birth as well as death at the request of Asher. She tried very hard not to think about how young they’d been, how much of their life they’d never get to live. 

They were all young once and this world was nothing if not unforgiving. She knew that better than most, it seemed. 

After finishing Caleb’s headstone, she worked on Ben’s. Asher took Caleb’s and gently began putting it back into the dirt, placing the stones once more against the wood. He did the same thing to Ben’s when she finished.

Ellie stood up, brushing the dirt from her jeans. She tucked her switchblade into her pocket. She looked up at the sky and noticed the sun slowly starting its descent and she wanted to make it to the next town before it got too dark. 

Asher stood up next to her, while Esther stayed kneeling between the graves. She was mouthing something, but Ellie refrained from reading her lips, allowing her the respect of privacy. 

“You didn’t need to do this,” he said. 

He was right. She didn’t have to do anything. She had no obligation to those kids. She didn’t know them, hadn’t even known their names. If she had known that people would return for their bodies, she might not have done anything. It was just the thought of the two of them, lying there, alone… she couldn’t do it. 

“I did, actually,” she said, as she leaned over to grab her backpack. She held it in her hands, brushing her thumb over the rocket pin. The hole in her chest grew ever so slightly. 

“Even so,” he said, seemingly knowing that arguing that point would get him nowhere. “If there’s anything we could do for you, anything you need…” 

He trailed off gently, as though the quiet would prompt her to ask for something from them. 

There was nothing, though. She wanted for very little and the things she  _ did  _ want were not things that could be given to her. Especially not by two strangers. 

“Where are you headed?” she asked instead, hoping to distract him from his question. 

Asher seemed to catch on because he refrained from asking again.

“I suppose that’s a decent question,” he said. “But the truth is we don’t really have a destination in mind.”

“Nomads?” she asked. She had run into a couple of people like that in her life. People that never stayed in one place, always roaming around. 

“No, I mean, I suppose we are now.” 

“Did you have to leave where you were at?” she asked because she could relate, remembering how quickly she had left Boston all those years ago. She wasn’t even certain why she was bothering to ask. She needed to get a move on before the sun got too low. 

“Basically, yeah,” he said. “Most of the people in our group lived in this small gated community in Santa Barbara—”

“Santa Barbara?” Ellie interrupted. She must have misheard. There’s no way that she would just happen to stumble upon a group of people from the very place she needed to get to.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, a bit taken aback. “We had a decent setup. The gates were strong enough to keep out any Infected and we had enough land to have a small farm, nothing too extravagant but it grew the basics of what we needed.”

“Why’d you leave then?” The question echoed in her head. She had left Jackson after all. 

“There wasn’t much of an option really,” he explained. “We were safe enough from the Infected, except for when we left to gather supplies, but this gang of hunters started to grow too large for us to handle, we had to make the choice to leave or risk being forced into slavery in their fucking  _ camps. _ ”

The cursing didn’t shock Ellie, having said far worse herself, but the loud clap from behind her certainly did. She jerked around to face Esther, who was standing now, her brow furrowed as she glowered at Asher.

“Sorry, Bubbeh,” he said, clearly chastised. 

“So this gang,” she said, after getting her bearings back. “They basically control Santa Barbara?”

“Basically,” he said. “We left a month ago, I think. We’ve been drifting around, but nothing quite feels like home.”

Home, Ellie thought. She was suddenly overwhelmed with a longing for a home she could never return to. Longing to smell, just once more, the faint scent of leather and coffee… to hear him say her name, just one more time… 

She shook her head to clear it.

“There’s one place I know of that I think will be what you’re looking for,” she said. 

“Really?” His voice was skeptical. She didn’t judge him for that. Places like Jackson were few and far between. 

“It’s not far, actually,” she said. “Maybe a week? More if you avoid Las Vegas, which I highly suggest doing.”

“Have you been there?” 

“It’s where I’m from,” she explained. “It’s a town called Jackson. It’s filled with all kinds of folks. You’ll fit in there.”

“And it’s safe?”

“I mean, as safe as can be in this world,” she said, shrugging. “It’s walled in and gated, meaning Infected can’t wander in, though our patrols put them down well away from the town and the walls are high enough that there’s no concern for hunters waltzing in.”

“T-that’s good,” he said, still a little shocked that a place like that might exist. 

“There’s plenty to eat and drink—there’s electricity, too, I guess I should mention that.”

“Why’d you leave then?” he asked, repeating the question she had asked him only moments before. 

Ellie looked away. It was quiet for a moment, the only sound coming from the leaves of the oak tree as the wind blew through its branches. 

“It’s not forever,” she said, finally. “There’s just something I gotta do first before I can go ho—go back.”

“And that something’s in Santa Barbara?”

Her body tensed up as she thought about Abby. “I hope so.”

* * *

After they traded directions—Ellie making sure she pointed them toward the safest route, far away from Las Vegas—they went their separate ways. She followed the road that Asher had told her to, one that would get her to the next town just as the sun began to dip below the horizon. He had mentioned a house their group had slept in, one that was relatively safe to sleep in. 

Ellie made it there without any trouble, the last lick of sunlight disappearing completely. She did a thorough search of the house, not wanting to get trapped in another basement, but there were no Infected anywhere nearby. There wasn’t much to scavenge in the house, so she decided to have an early night to get a move on first thing in the morning. She took up residence in a bedroom on the second floor. It was a decent room if a tad ransacked. Before settling down, she crossed the room to look out the window, judging its ability to be an escape if need be. Satisfied that she’d be able to jump if the opportunity arose. 

She crossed back to the door and closed it, shoving a short but seemingly sturdy bookshelf in front of it. She then settled down at the head of the bed, taking her backpack off and placing it beside her, pulling out her journal and some dried jerky. 

She munched on a few pieces of the jerky while she wrote down snippets of what had happened that day. She also haphazardly sketched out an image of an oak tree, with a pair of far too small graves lying beneath it. 

Ellie began to fall asleep with her journal on her lap and a pencil in hand. 

“ _ If I ever were to lose you…”  _ a voice whispered in her ear as she lost consciousness. “ _ I’d surely lose myself… _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/halvbloodprince) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/halvblodprince/?hl=en) | [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@halvblodprince)


	4. Unexpected Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie woke up alone but didn't stay that way for long. she had some... unexpected company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like i always write too much dialogue and not enough of the in-between stuff. so... sorry. lol
> 
> also hey look, here's more of my OC.

Ellie woke at the crack of dawn, as she always did when she wasn’t within the safety of Jackson’s walls. Even on the farm, it was hard to stay asleep once the sun began to peak above the horizon. She refrained from getting up immediately, instead choosing to quietly take stock of herself. Her body ached, most likely from the being stuck in a basement for three days and then all that digging she did. It was nothing she couldn’t handle, however. She’d been through worse. 

She stood up, taking a deep breath before twisting her torso, soft cracks running down her spine. She stretched her arms out and over her head, pulling the muscles taut before she grabbed her bag. She made sure her journal and the jerky was tucked back in before she swung it over her shoulders. She glanced around the bed to make sure there was nothing else she needed to grab before she made her way over to the door. 

She moved the bookshelf back to where it had been and opened the door. It was as she stepped toward the staircase that she heard it; a faint creak of a floorboard from downstairs. 

Immediately on the alert, she pulled her bow out and quickly notched an arrow as she rounded the railing of the stairs. Holding her breath as she listened, she could only make out a single set of footsteps. It didn’t sound like any sort of Infected. It wasn’t shuffling about, but it also wasn’t the quiet creeping that she would expect from a hunter. It was the sound of someone who was walking through the house with a purpose. As though they knew she’d be here. Was she followed? But who would follow her? Was she really going to entertain the thought that someone from Jackson followed her out here? Did Dina—

No. There would be no logical reason for Dina to have followed her. She had JJ to think about. Jesse, maybe…. But she honestly couldn’t see him doing that again. Once was enough. Dina had made it clear when she left that there would be no one following after her. It’s how she wanted it, anyway. 

“Ellie?” came a voice. It wasn’t Jesse’s and it definitely wasn’t Dina’s. “Are you still here?”

She put her bow away and slid her arrow back into her backpack. Making her way downstairs, she met Asher at the bottom.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him. He should have been on his way to Jackson. 

“I came to lend my assistance,” he said as if it were obvious. It wasn’t. 

“Your assistance,” she stated, her voice flat. “You don’t even—I don't need help.”

His cheek tinged with red. “I just figured it wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “I can help you navigate the town.”

Ellie was conflicted. It would be nice to have someone that knew the area to help her find Abby, but that would mean divulging what exactly she was looking for in Santa Barbara to a virtual stranger. It was hard to guess what someone’s reaction would be to her saying, “I’m hunting someone down to kill them.” 

“I don’t need help,” she said instead, moving around him to make her way out the front door. The sun had barely peaked over the horizon as she left the house. The air was cool against her still sleep-warm skin. 

She took off down the street at a reasonably fast pace, but Asher’s much longer strides had him catching up to her in no time.

“Sometimes someone says they don’t need help, but deep inside they’re  _ begging— _ ” 

Ellie stopped walking abruptly, swinging her gaze around to pierce him with a glare. 

“Does it  _ look  _ like I’m begging?” 

“Well,” he said, seemingly unconcerned with her anger. “Not really, but—”

“There’s no but,” she replied, interrupting again. “I don’t need any help. You don’t even know what I’m after; you don’t even know  _ me _ , nor do I know  _ you.  _ So just go back to your family.”

She turned once more and headed off down the street. She would be able to handle whatever Santa Barbara had to throw at her on her own. Nothing was worse than what she had already been through, so really she had nothing left to lose. 

Ellie relaxed a bit when she didn’t immediately hear footsteps following her. If she kept up a decent pace and took minimal breaks, she could reach the coast in as little as three days. Her journey was almost over and then she could go back and she could rest.  _ Really  _ and  _ truly  _ rest. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually  _ slept _ . 

She heard a scuff of a shoe behind her and sighed. 

“I told you to  _ leave— _ ” 

“My name is Asher,” he said, interrupting her this time. “I’m 21 years old. I was born five years after the outbreak, in the same house my parents had married in six years prior.”

Ellie kept walking and he fell into step behind her, continuing to prattle on about himself as she tried to ignore him. 

“I hate onions, but I love tomatoes,” he continued. “My father was a doctor and my—”

“I don’t care!” Ellie shouted, shutting him up. She stopped walking, which almost caused Asher to run into her back. “I don’t. Just shut up, please.”

“I had two younger—”

“Stop!”

“—brothers,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Their names were Ben and Caleb.”

Ellie had already guessed that they had been related, but the words hurt just the same. 

“Why?” she whispered. 

“I promised my mother before she died that I would protect them and I failed.”

She jerked her head to the side as tears gathered in her eyes. She  _ would not  _ cry, she told herself. There was nothing she could do for him. She had nothing to offer him, no words that would ease any of the pain he was feeling. She had nothing. 

The sun was steadily rising in the sky, bringing the heat with it without a care for the turmoil below. The warm air began to prickle her skin. It was a reminder that she needed to get a move on. 

“What do you want from me? I have  _ nothing  _ to give you,” she said. 

“I don’t want anything,” he replied. “I just—”

He broke off and let out a heavy sigh. Ellie turned around to look him in the face. 

He was taller than her, something she had known from the previous day but hadn’t bothered to care enough to make note of it. He was bulkier than her, too, but that was generally a given. Ellie wasn’t weak by any means, but she tended to avoid going hand to hand whenever possible, leaving her a bit more lithe than perhaps she’d like. 

His hair was dark and the wavy locks were long enough to be tucked behind his ears. His eyes were light warm grey, though the bags beneath them were anything but. His skin was tan, a byproduct of living in California no doubt. He had a scar on his bottom lip, causing the pale pink skin to be raised just a bit. He was wearing a plain shirt with dark jeans, the same ones as yesterday, if a little dustier. 

Ellie supposed he’d be attractive if she didn’t prefer soft skin and curves. 

“I couldn’t do anything for them,” he said, pulling her attention back to his face, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “But I could do something for you.”

She shook her head. “If you’re looking for redemption, you’re not gonna find it where I’m going.”

He cocked his head to the side. “And what is it that you’re looking for?”

Her eyes fell to her arm, to the tattoo covering her bite mark. She reached her other hand over and gently rubbed her thumb over the figure of the moth. The skin was slightly raised where the bite had been and where the fungus had tried to grow. The chemicals she had used to burn it off had done a good job at leveling the scar tissue a bit and killed off any chance of fungus regrowing. 

“ _ If I ever were to lose you, _ ” a voice crooned through her head. “ _ I’d surely lose myself… _ ”

“Vengeance,” she said, letting her hand drop. 

* * *

Ellie had thought that her response would have put him off, but Asher kept close to her, matching her stride for stride as they made their way to Santa Barbara. Short of dashing off unexpectedly and  _ maybe  _ losing track of him, there was no way for her to shake him. Besides, he knew where she was headed anyway. 

The walk was quiet, their pace probably faster than Asher was accustomed to since his breathing was a bit labored whereas Ellie’s was calm. She was used to walking this fast, though. It was just how she walked now unless she was forced to follow behind someone else. 

The sun overhead was warm, a lot warmer than she was used to. She stuck to walking in the shade as often as she could, her pale freckled skin easily susceptible to sunburn. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She was already sweating and it was barely noon. 

She glanced over at her unwanted companion. His breathing might be a tad uneven, but his skin showed no signs of sweating beyond perhaps a slight sheen. She wasn’t sure what to say, or if she even wanted to say anything. She didn’t want him here and yet, here he walked. Ellie was slightly surprised that he didn’t question her after she had told him what she was after. He seemed like the type of person that would question her on what she meant, just to understand better. 

The silence was growing exceedingly uncomfortable. It was different when she was on her own, where she welcomed the silence. Walking next to someone and not having even a tiny bit of small talk was awkward. It didn't seem like he was going anywhere anytime soon… 

“I used to live in the Boston QZ,” she said, refusing to look at her companion and instead focusing her eyes on the road in front of her.

There were cars left abandoned up and down the street. She refrained from looking through them. There wasn’t anything she really needed and it would just take too much time. Chances are that they had been rifled through plenty already, leaving nothing behind. 

“A Quarantine Zone?” he said, sounding surprised. “Didn’t know there were any of those left.” 

She made an affirmative sound in the back of her throat. “I think Boston is one of the last?” 

She wasn’t sure, to be honest. It was not as though she had been to many of them and once she left Boston she never went back. Whether or not it was still standing had never been a concern for her. 

“There weren’t many on the coast of California,” he said. “From what I know, at least.” 

She could agree with that, she thought. Things seemed more spread out over here. It was possible that Las Vegas could have been a Quarantine Zone since there had been walls built around it, but considering the amount of Infected she could hear beyond the walls, it was likely to be abandoned. If it even really got a chance to  _ be  _ a Quarantine Zone in the first place. 

“What was Boston like?” he asked her. It seemed like he wanted to keep the conversation going since she had started it. 

“It was… suffocating,” she said. “People would line up for blocks for food, but they’d get nothing but scraps.”

Ellie wasn’t one of those people, but she still saw them. Being in the Military School had the benefit of kitchens where she’d get her food. It wasn’t a lot, but she never had to line up for it beyond waiting with the other students.

“Why’d you leave?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? What would her life have been like if she hadn’t followed Riley to the arcade that night? Would she have joined the Military and just become another faceless cog? She never would have been bitten, she never would have known that she was immune, wouldn’t have met Tess and Jo— 

She cut off that thought. It didn’t matter. She  _ had  _ followed Riley that night and she  _ had _ left Boston. Nothing would change that. 

“Have you ever heard of the Fireflies?” she said. 

“Vaguely, I think,” he said. “Weren’t they looking for a cure or something?”

“Yeah, something like that,” she replied, ignoring the way her hand twitched toward her tattoo. “I left to… join them, you could say.” 

“Are they in Jackson then?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “There aren’t really Fireflies anymore. They gave up on finding a cure and disbanded. They’re scattered around by now.”

It wasn’t a lie, she told herself. She was just omitting a few details. It wasn’t important anyway. What did it matter that the fireflies were gone now? Asher had no connection to them. So his knowledge of her involvement would help no one. 

“That’s too bad,” he said. “It would have been nice to have a cure.”

“Yeah…” she said, trailing off. It would have been. Her death would have been meaningful. She could have saved the world and yet… here she was, on a road in California, with a boy she hardly knew, having done nothing significant in her life. 

The conversation hit a bit of a lull after that. Ellie wasn't quite sure what else to say, because anything after Boston involved Jo—involved  _ him  _ and she couldn’t bring herself to even think about him. Asher seemed to understand that and didn’t ask her anything else. 

They continued walking in silence. The only sound coming from their footsteps and the chittering of wildlife nearby. There was a slight breeze, but it was not enough to stave off the heat of the encroaching afternoon. When they rested for a brief moment, after walking for several hours already, she pulled out her water bottle and took a few healthy swigs of it. She watched as Asher did the same. 

His backpack was newer than hers, or rather it was less used. Hers had tears that she would need to patch up eventually and the fabric had faded in some spots, but it hadn’t failed her yet and she was loath to get rid of it. 

“There’s a river that we should reach before nightfall,” Asher said as Ellie put her water bottle back into her bag. “We can refill our bottles there.”

She nodded in response. It was nice to have someone that knew where things were. The only benefit so far, she thought. Asher would at least be able to lead the way. No more getting lost in the forest hoping they come across the road they had been looking for. If she was honest with herself, though, the presence of another body nearby was somewhat comforting. It was easy to forget herself when she was alone, to be lost inside her own head, drowning.

It was easier to pretend that everything was okay when there was someone with her, keeping her from wallowing. That’s not to say it wasn’t strange. She had to stop herself a few times before she started to blurt out dumb puns. She was starting to feel a little guilty. Asher had shared a lot with her and all she told him was that she had been from Boston. That wasn’t a lot to go on. 

“My mother’s name was Anna,” she blurted out, twenty minutes after they had started walking again.

They hadn’t been stopped long, but it had been silent except for Asher’s mention of the river, and the walking after had also been silent. It was getting to her head. When she started, she had been alone, and it wasn’t out of character for her to make little comments to herself. Not to say that she  _ talked  _ to herself, more that she spoke her thoughts aloud. There was no one to hear, so what did it matter? When she had traveled with Dina, it hadn’t mattered much because one or both of them would fill the silence with  _ something _ . 

“What was she like?” Asher asked, obviously having noted her use of the past tense. 

Ellie shrugged. “I never knew her.”

“Oh,” Asher said, his voice full of sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she told him. “It’s fine.”

And it was. It wasn’t a painful subject for her. Not really. She only knew of her mother in abstract terms. She knew her name. She’d read a letter. She had her switchblade… but that was it. She had no idea what her mother looked like, or sounded like, or smelled like. There were no memories associated with the woman, so there wasn’t anything for her to miss. She felt a loss, sometimes, but it wasn’t debilitating. It was more of a fleeting longing for something she’d never had. 

“My Mom’s name was Ariella,” he said, though this time his voice had a hint of a smile. She glanced at his face and sure enough, a small smile graced his features. It brightened up his otherwise gloomy expression. 

“How’d she…” Ellie trailed off, unable to finish the question. How stupid was she? Why’d she even ask something like that?

“It was cancer,” he said. “She’d had it for a while, but there wasn’t a way to get treatments for it, with all the hospitals closed down.”

Ellie knew what cancer was, of course, but it was strange to think that people still got sick with it. Wasn’t there enough things in this world trying to kill them? Did they have to fight their own bodies, too? 

“It was peaceful,” he said after Ellie remained quiet. “I was sad— _ am  _ sad, and I miss her, but she was ready to go.” 

She wasn’t sure what to say. Ready to go? How could anybody be  _ ready  _ to die? Except, she had been, hadn’t she? In Salt Lake, even if she didn’t know it at the time, she had been ready to die. 

“Her passing was what prompted us to leave Santa Barbara,” he continued. “We would have left sooner than that, but she never would have been able to travel and no one wanted to leave her.” 

This meant that her death was recent, Ellie thought, since he had mentioned before that they left only a few months ago. Still, she was silent. What was there to say? Asher didn’t seem to be waiting for any sort of response, since he just kept chatting. 

“I think she knew that, though,” he said. “Which was why it wasn’t so much of a surprise to find that she suddenly took a turn.” 

It was as if he started talking and suddenly couldn’t stop until it was all out in the open. 

“We buried her and then the next day we packed up and left, barely avoiding the Rattlers, who had been knocking on our gated community for long enough.”

“Rattlers?” she said. “They’re the gang, right? That took over?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They took my father last year and… well, no one really survives that long so we… had to assume the worst. We knew then that we would have to leave.” 

Fuck, Ellie thought. He had virtually lost everyone in such a short period. How was he not going crazy? Though, if she thought about it, the only deaths that he had witnessed that had been violent had been his brothers, but with Infected, there wasn’t much to rage against, she supposed. Plus, all the Infected on that block had been wiped out completely. The deaths had all been avenged in a way. His mother's death sounded very peaceful as if everyone had just been waiting for her to let go. His father… well, she wasn’t sure. 

“Are you sure you want to go back?” she asked him. There would be a lot of memories for him, she figured. Being in Jackson was hard for her so she figured it might be the same for Asher in Santa Barbara. 

She glanced at Asher’s face, surprised to find that he was staring right at her, his eyes piercing. It made her slightly uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of such a look. It seemed like he was looking for something in her face because after a few seconds he gave a sort of half-smile and looked away. 

“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” he said, his voice light despite their previous conversation. 

She wasn’t trying to get  _ rid  _ of him, per se… just that, the closer they got to Santa Barbara, the more her skin crawled. It was as if her body could sense that she was getting closer to Abby and was awaiting the inevitable confrontation. She was not expecting there to be an audience when she finally met up with her.

“You don’t know what you’re walking into,” she said. “You don't even know what I'm after.”

“Vengeance, you said,” Asher replied. “I don’t know much about that, but…”

“There’s no buts!” she snapped, stopping in her tracks. The abrupt stop surprised Asher, who took a few steps before stopping himself, looking back at her. 

“There’s no buts,” she repeated. “I came here to find someone and when I find them…”

She trailed off a bit and asher stood in silence, waiting. She glanced off to the side. The sun had long since reached the pinnacle of the sky, its rays beating down on them. She was sweating from the heat, from the walking, and from the anger that was boiling deep in her gut. 

“…I’m going to kill them,” she said. 

Ellie started walking again, passing Asher in only a few steps. She didn’t stop, didn’t look back. Just kept walking. 

The only steps she could hear were her own and she tried to tell herself that it was what she wanted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/halvbloodprince) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/halvblodprince/?hl=en) | [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@halvblodprince)


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